Prosecutors Rebuked in Molestation Case

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Therapists and parents improperly prodded children to accuse a child-care worker of bizarre sexual abuse, a San Diego grand jury said in a report issued on Wednesday that sharply criticized the prosecution" of the case.

In November, after seven months of trial, a jury took seven hours to acquit Dale Akiki, 35, a mentally retarded and physically deformed church volunteer, who had been charged with sexually abusing, torturing and kidnapping nine children at a suburban San Diego church in 1988 and 1989.

The grand jury, which investigated the case at the request of San Diego County supervisors, said the children had been pressured to come up with stories about satanic ritual abuse, with therapists improperly serving as investigators. The report also accused the county District Attorney, Ed Miller, of failing to adequately supervise his deputies in the case.

"Overzealous prosecution can lead to injustice," said Joe Dolphin, the foreman of the grand jury. "Lawyers should try cases, not causes. When perspective gets lost, everything becomes muddled and tainted."

Mr. Miller responded that many criticisms in the report were being addressed by his office, which he said had engaged in a "candid self-assessment."

Mr. Akiki, who was held for two and a half years without bail, is bringing a civil suit for $110 million against San Diego County.

Kate Coyne, the public defender who represented Mr. Akiki, said the report did not go far enough. "I think there is a recognition in these conclusions that Dale Akiki is innocent and should never have been prosecuted," she said.

As the Akiki case proceeded last year, the testimony of the children, who were 3 and 4 years old at the time he was a volunteer and were now at least 7, became increasingly colorful, including descriptions of satanic rites. They accused Mr. Akiki of hanging them upside down from a chandelier, dunking them in toilets, drinking blood, bringing an elephant and a giraffe to class and mutilating and killing animals and a human baby.

The grand jury criticized the prosecution for asking therapists to attend a seminar on ritual abuse and for urging them to seek damaging testimony from the children.

"We were disturbed that there might have been some kind of predisposition of the therapists toward that kind of bent," Mr. Dolphin said. He added that members of the grand jury had concluded that satanic ritual abuse during child molestation "just does not occur in San Diego County."

Mr. Dolphin said the grand jury also studied other child-abuse cases that resulted in acquittals or the overturning of guilty verdicts. New Jersey and Nevada Cases

In March 1993, a New Jersey appeals court overturned the conviction of Margaret Kelly Michaels, who began serving a 47-year sentence in 1988 after being convicted of abusing 19 children at the Wee Care Nursery School in Maplewood, N.J. Ten days earlier, the Nevada Supreme Court overturned the 1988 child molestation conviction of Martha Felix and her nephew Francisco Ontiveros.

Those investigations followed the highly publicized McMartin Preschool case in Los Angeles. That trial, the longest criminal trial in American history, ended in 1990 without convictions after six and a half years.

Reviewing those cases as well as the Akiki case, the grand jury concluded, "There is no justification for further pursuit of the theory of satanic ritual child molestation in the investigation and prosecution of child abuse cases."

In the Akiki case, it said, "Although the parents were cautioned not to talk about these events with the children, the fact is that at least some of the parents did." 'Pressures' on Children

In addition, it said, the prosecutors asked the therapists to provide more disclosures of abuse. "The parents were urging children to provide more and more allegations that could be used for trial," the report said. "The pressures on the children were enormous."

The grand jury also criticized the use, in this case and others, of such models as the child sexual abuse syndrome, a catalogue of behavior that is purported to be evidence of abuse. These include symptoms like nightmares, separation anxiety, fear of dying, fear of water and fear of doctor's offices.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 12 of the National edition with the headline: Prosecutors Rebuked in Molestation Case. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe